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“The time has come,” The Walrus said, “to talk of many things.” Send us a letter, an email (letters@thewalrus.ca), or a tweet, or post on this website. Comments may be published in any medium and edited for length, clarity, and accuracy. Mail correspondence to: 411 Richmond St. E., Suite B15, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5A 3S5

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The Walrus counts on its writers to make independent evaluations of difficult topics. The best journalism—no matter how descriptive, opinion driven, or narrative driven—is based on facts, and those facts should be clearly presented in the story. The Walrus is committed to ensuring the validity of an argument and finding balance between various perspectives on any given issue, while keeping in mind the reliability and motivations of individual sources.

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As soon as The Walrus is made aware of an error, fact-checkers will review the statement in question. Any needed corrections will be noted online at the bottom of the article—and in the next print issue, if the error originally appeared in print. The correction will reference the original error and supply the correct information and the date.
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The Walrus allows the use of alternate names for real people only in cases involving legitimate safety concerns or where personal privacy must be protected for serious reasons. If the name of a subject or source is already public and associated with specific events, concealment may not be justified. We will be diligent in explaining a veiled source’s credibility, as much as possible without disclosing their identity, and in explaining why they have remained anonymous.

Editorial Independence
Journalism at The Walrus is produced independently of commercial or political interests. The editorial staff and writers do not accept gifts, including paid travel, in order to avoid any conflict of interest or appearance thereof. When a writer relies on an organization for access to an event or product, we are transparent about the relationship and note it within the relevant work. We also cite potential conflicts of interest—and, where applicable, credit funding sources—on the same page as the relevant work.

Contributors or writers are contractually obligated to disclose practices that may deviate from the ethics policy of The Walrus to our editorial team.

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The Walrus maintains a style guide, which is regularly reviewed and updated to reflect current conversations about culture and terminology.

For any situation not covered by this policy, we refer to the Ethics Guidelines of the Canadian Association of Journalists.

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Inclusiveness is at the heart of thinking and acting as journalists—and supports the educational mandate of The Walrus. Race, class, generation, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and geography all affect point of view. The Walrus believes that reflecting societal differences in reporting leads to better, more nuanced stories and a better-informed community.

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About The Walrus

The Walrus was founded in 2003. As a registered charity, we publish independent, fact-based journalism in The Walrus and at thewalrus.ca; we produce national, ideas-focused events, including our flagship series The Walrus Talks; and we train emerging professionals in publishing and non-profit management. The Walrus is invested in the idea that a healthy society relies on informed citizens.

The Walrus publishes content nearly every day on thewalrus.ca and ten times a year in print. Our editorial priorities include politics and world affairs, health and science, society, the environment, law and justice, Indigenous issues, business and economics, the arts (including music, dance, film and television, literature, and fiction and poetry), and Canada’s place in the world.

Based in Toronto, The Walrus currently has a full-time editorial staff of fifteen, and we work with writers and artists across Canada and the world. Our masthead can be found here.

Ownership, Funding, and Grants

The Walrus is operated by the charitable, non-profit Walrus Foundation, which is overseen by a board of directors, with the support of a national advisory committee and an educational review committee. The foundation’s revenue comes from multiple sources, including advertising sales, sponsorships, circulation, donations, government grants, and events. More than 1,500 donors and sponsors supported The Walrus in 2017.

Ethics Policy

The Walrus is committed to reporting that is fair, accurate, complete, transparent, and independent.

Fact-Checking Standards
Stories that appear in The Walrus and thewalrus.ca are fact-checked. Our fact-checkers verify everything from broad claims made by authors to small details, such as dates and the spelling of names. Fact-checking records at The Walrus are archived in storage once a story is published.

The Walrus counts on its writers to make independent evaluations of difficult topics. The best journalism—no matter how descriptive, opinion driven, or narrative driven—is based on facts, and those facts should be clearly presented in the story. The Walrus is committed to ensuring the validity of an argument and finding balance between various perspectives on any given issue, while keeping in mind the reliability and motivations of individual sources.

Corrections
As soon as The Walrus is made aware of an error, fact-checkers will review the statement in question. Any needed corrections will be noted online at the bottom of the article—and in the next print issue, if the error originally appeared in print. The correction will reference the original error and supply the correct information and the date.
If you notice an error in something published by The Walrus, please send us a message at web@thewalrus.ca with the subject line “Correction.”

Veiled Sources
The Walrus allows the use of alternate names for real people only in cases involving legitimate safety concerns or where personal privacy must be protected for serious reasons. If the name of a subject or source is already public and associated with specific events, concealment may not be justified. We will be diligent in explaining a veiled source’s credibility, as much as possible without disclosing their identity, and in explaining why they have remained anonymous.

Editorial Independence
Journalism at The Walrus is produced independently of commercial or political interests. The editorial staff and writers do not accept gifts, including paid travel, in order to avoid any conflict of interest or appearance thereof. When a writer relies on an organization for access to an event or product, we are transparent about the relationship and note it within the relevant work. We also cite potential conflicts of interest—and, where applicable, credit funding sources—on the same page as the relevant work.

Contributors or writers are contractually obligated to disclose practices that may deviate from the ethics policy of The Walrus to our editorial team.

Editorial Standards
The Walrus maintains a style guide, which is regularly reviewed and updated to reflect current conversations about culture and terminology.

For any situation not covered by this policy, we refer to the Ethics Guidelines of the Canadian Association of Journalists.

Diversity Statement

Inclusiveness is at the heart of thinking and acting as journalists—and supports the educational mandate of The Walrus. Race, class, generation, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and geography all affect point of view. The Walrus believes that reflecting societal differences in reporting leads to better, more nuanced stories and a better-informed community.

The Walrus is committed to employment equity and diversity.

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The Key to Kabul
I have been engaged in health care development and policy work for more than three of the past eight years in Afghanistan, most recently in Kabul. A friend sent me Charles Montgomery’s article “The Archipelago of Fear” (December 2008), which I thought a reasonably good representation of the dysfunction that plagues the city’s reconstruction and the effect of architectural fearmongering on its people.

But Montgomery doesn’t give any credit where it’s due: to the organizations, both national and international, that have improved the economic situation, literacy, and health of the Afghan people. Some of us were in here before the barriers were built, when we could meet the people. I speak enough Dari to get by and have, unlike most of the westerners in Montgomery’s article, made a tremendous effort to understand the culture and bring this knowledge to bear in my work. Of course, it’s easy to see why successes like mine didn’t make it into the story. Those of us who don’t hang out at L’Atmosphère are harder to find.

It’s typical for the media to focus on the hopelessness of the situation in Afghanistan. But I was also here during the Taliban regime, and I can assure readers there have been many positive changes since then. Maybe if reporters had witnessed this change themselves, they would see fit to broadcast some hope.

Maureen MayhewManagement Sciences for HealthKabul, Afghanistan

Charles Montgomery suggests that Afghanistan must be rebuilt by Afghans for the economic, social, and psychological welfare of the country, but completely misses the irony inherent in a westerner arriving at this conclusion. His depictions of the “other,” even in the context of an effort to measure the distance between foreigners and natives, smacks of colonialism, and there is very little from Afghans themselves in the article to counteract this. If Canadians could connect more directly with the people of Afghanistan by, say, reading Afghan writers in Canadian magazines, perhaps public opinion and even reconstruction initiatives wouldn’t become so mired in the arrogant rhetoric of international relations.

Danielle BlanchardVancouver, BC

Charles Montgomery writes, “Aid dollars, opium profits, and war booty [have] transformed the Afghan capital into a manic showcase of glittering mansions, glaring inequity, and militarized urbanity.” While this may be true, I feel the author forgets that the peaceful West is beset with similar problems. In any case, it is good to report such inequalities so that improvements can be made.

Regarding Montgomery’s specific finding that most of the money spent on international construction contracts goes to non-Afghan contractors, we should take a close look at the process by which the West provides this relief. In the US, the president puts a budget together, and Congress approves it. Then money is allocated for particular projects, and authorization is given to the United States Agency for International Development to execute them. But usaid doesn’t have any expertise in this field, so it calls for bids. That is how BearingPoint, the Louis Berger Group, and other Western ngos come into play. Since these organizations don’t always have the right personnel for the job, they hire subcontractors.

Here’s the problem: subcontractors must complete necessary documents in English, they must have a number of years of experience in the field, and their employees must have a certain level of education, often a bachelor’s or master’s degree. Afghanistan, remember, has been at war for almost half a century, and subcontractors tend to hire from outside the country. These “experts” might agree to train their Afghan counterparts to obtain the contracts, but they seldom do, as they would soon be unemployed themselves.

The solution, of course, is to establish an independent system of vocational training in Afghanistan. There are initiatives we might build on, such as Project Artemis–Afghanistan, the Thunderbird School of Global Management’s entrepreneurial skills training program for promising Afghan businesswomen.

On a side note, I am taken aback that Canadian defence attaché Colonel McLean would offer such a grim perspective of Kabul, as he is supposed to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Yasin KhostiCo-founder and former presidentSociety of Afghan Architects and EngineersPeoria, Arizona

* * *

Bloody Americans
In “The Lynching of Louie Sam” (December), which tells the story of a rare lynching on Canadian soil by an American mob, John Vaillant wonders how “the United States and Canada could differ so much on the subject of due process.” John Ralston Saul provides one possible answer in his new book, A Fair Country. We are a Métis nation, he says, founded on the aboriginal ideal of fairness and an adaptive orientation toward negotiation rather than violence.

Might I suggest a slight variation on Saul’s thesis? While Canada’s independence evolved in relative peace, the US was born out of violent revolution. Its civil war was proportionally one of the bloodiest in history; the rebellions in Lower Canada, Upper Canada, and the Northwest would hardly qualify as skirmishes south of the border.

Violence also characterized the settlement of the American West. I am not referring only to the ethnic cleansing of aboriginals, but to fierce competition among settlers for the best land. In the absence of official law enforcement, vigilantism saved communities from falling to anarchy or gangster rule.

In Canada, settlers were generally preceded by the Northwest Mounted Police and had no need to impose their own law. The conditions for a High Noon– style shootout between a lone sheriff and some gangsters, for instance, simply didn’t exist here. And, in at least one case I’m aware of, prospective settlers drew their acreages from an officer’s hat.

Raymond PeringerToronto, ON

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“The time has come,” The Walrus said, “to talk of many things.” Write to us at letters@walrusmagazine.com or 101–19 Duncan Street, Toronto, ON, M5H 3H1. Letters may be edited for length, clarity, and accuracy, and may be published in any medium.

About the Author(s)

“The time has come,” The Walrus said, “to talk of many things.” Send us a letter, an email (letters@thewalrus.ca), or a tweet, or post on this website. Comments may be published in any medium and edited for length, clarity, and accuracy. Mail correspondence to: 411 Richmond St. E., Suite B15, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5A 3S5

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